For three years a handful of atevi engineers, he and Jase and to a certain extent, Yolanda Mercheson, with their respective staffs, had shared every breath, lived and breathed the shuttle, the space center, the program.
“Nice,” Lund said of the decor.
Bren took a breath. Let it out slowly. Lund meant a compliment. He and Jase had hopedfor just such ease in humans when they came to these rooms. Cope hadn’t even said that much when he’d come down four weeks ago, yet Cope had lived those four weeks almost exclusively in these rooms because he’d had motion sickness onlywhen he’d left this facility… had had it all the way across the strait at night on the plane, had had it in his new residence on Mospheira, probably would have it in his new offices, give or take the drugs that held it at bay, and despite his suggestions to State to try to limit Cope’s exposure to changing light conditions and contrasts and open horizons.
He’d grown sensitive to such details, thanks to Jase. Irregularities in lighting were an indication of failing systems, to a ship-born human… large spaces were a particular fear, or so Jason had explained to him: a sensible fear of impact.
Make the corridors interrupted with cross-corridors and nooks that could be a refuge in acceleration: the center did that. Zero chance the space center would ever accelerate, but small chance that blue that comforted Lund and his friends was sky, either. It was something to do with hindbrain and childhood security, he supposed, not intellect.
So Lund liked the decor… didn’t apparently notice that there were no steps to make humans labor or to trip up atevi strides. Elevators handled all level changes. Control panels and wall switches sat at intermediate height, a little high for humans, not too low for atevi.
And the flowers on the table, an atevi welcome in this area, were a carefully chosen arrangement—no different than the species familiar to Mospheirans, but felicitous in number and color, given the blue and green: they were spring, and hope.
“Lovely flowers,” Kate was kind enough to say, perhaps making conscious amends for Lund. She and Ben might understand. The others might finally twig to at least that. Mospheirans were remarkably stubborn in their insularity, but the news channels had been full of unbridled analysis of atevi ways in the last three years. In the end, he’d sent his own reaction in an interview, trying to satisfy a burgeoning, fearful curiosity without weakening the strictures that kept the species from unofficial contact. Adventurous types on either side of the straits had tried contact in rowboats, and successful, live venturers, even escorted back by the authorities, were damned dangerous to have expounding in the press and over the airwaves.
How long could they hold two curious species apart, with a narrow body of water separating them?
That, apart from hostile aliens in some other solar system, was one of the worries inherent in the space program… in this launch, in Jason’s recall, and in this mission. Atevi wouldgrow close, again, to humans.
The door to the lounge opened.
And there Jason met them—his dark hair starkly, badly, shockingly cut. In three years Jason had carefully grown the beginnings of a respectable braid, that badge of atevi dignity, and now he’d cut it, along with his ties to the earth… God alone knew in what frame of mind when he’d gotten the orders from above. Jase wore a dark-blue jersey, black trousers, and, God save them both, that frayed fishing jacket Toby had given him three years ago.
“Jason Graham,” he introduced himself to the Mospheirans, as if television hadn’t broadcast his image all over the planet at least twice a week. He didn’t quite look at Bren, not looking him in the eye, at least. “Jase is what I go by.” Duly, Jase shook hands, smiled, did all the right and human things with the newcomers: Bren accomplished the introductions, wanting all the while to ask the essential question, but they were waist-deep in newcomers and unanswered questions.
“Mine’s the first room,” Jason said to the incomers, indicating the first of the twenty rooms in circular arrangement around the common room: no head, no seniormost: King Arthur’s revolutionary arrangement. It set atevi teeth on edge. To atevi eyes, it was social chaos. War. “Plenty of room, this trip. We have space for more.”
All cheerfulness… which certainly hadn’t been Jase’s mood when he’d gotten the order to fly, and was not what he expected from Jase, not with that haircut.
Bren waited, offered polite, required courtesies. Considered the coat, the performance, because performance it surely was… and God alone knew how Jase had gotten out the door past their major domo wearing that; God knew how he’d saved it from the servants.
But the jacket was a map of explorations. There was an abrasion on the elbow, where Jase had tried to fall in the ocean. Jase had begged, pleaded, and demanded his visit to the ocean—for ulterior motives, as it had turned out. But Jase had fallen in love with the sea.
And what did it say, that, going home, Jase chose that ratty, salt-weakened jacket and a shirt he knew had seen three years of wear? What had Jase been thinking, and what must the servants have thought, when Jase took something to his hair.
“Where’s the shuttle?” Tom Lund was forward enough to ask.
Jason didn’t give them the expected, verbal answer. He walked over to the wall and pushed the button that motored the blinds aside.
The gleaming white, bent-nosed bird out on the tarmac seemed about to lift from the ground of its own volition. It looked small… until the eye realized those service vehicles that attended it were trucks.
“God.” Ben was the only one with a voice. “My God.”
And Kate: “It’s big.”
When ten men set their hands to a rope and pulled in unison, amazing amounts of weight slid.
When an entire civilization worked in concert to accomplish materials and training for a tested design, three years produced—this shining, beautiful creature.
“ Shai-shan,” Bren said, standing behind the group, finding a voice. “ Favorable Wind.” He’d seen Shai-shanfrom framework to molds to first flight, and now Jason’s life, Jason’s departure from the world, rode on these same wings. He’d translated every line of her. He’d all but given birth when she lifted off for her maiden flight, a curious emotion for a maker of dictionaries, a parser of words and meanings.
“Marvelous, marvelous thing,” Kate managed to say, and the group stayed and stared.
Jason had a sense of the dramatic, and of diversion. Bren caught Jason’s eye once for all as the group, Kate last, with a lingering glance at the shuttle, began to disperse, subdued, to make their choice of accommodations.
For a moment Jase gazed back at it, too, then looked at him with a subtle shift of the eyes that indicated the dining recess.
He went, Jason went. Banichi and Jago walked as far as the arch and stopped.
There would not be intrusion.
“So they want you up there,” was Bren’s opener.
“The aiji’s order,” Jason said with a brittle edge. “Packed in an hour. Hurry and wait.”
“I’m sure I’ll learn why” Bren said faintly.
“I’m sure Iwill,” Jase said.
“Damn it.”
“Damn it,” Jase said. That much was Mosphei’, and then, in Ragi: “Sit a moment. The tea’s not bad.”
“Shouldn’t be,” Bren said. “We ordered it.”
So the parting they’d both dreaded came down to a cup of tea from a dispenser, and all Bren could hope for was a quiet, guarded conversation in the dining section. The Mospheirans wandered about. Banichi and Jago were forbidding gatekeepers, not moving a muscle.
“Wish I had answers for you,” Bren said. “I wish I had anyanswers. You don’t know?”
“Just… word came: get up there; and word came from the aiji. Go. Not a choice in the world. I suppose the aiji wanted me here to look over our guests, make sure they didn’t steal the silverware.”
Atevi joke.
“I don’t know,” Bren said. “I swear I don’t know. Didn’t know. Didn’t have any more warning than you did.”